EggXpert

Hi all -
I just upgraded my PC (I'll list the specs below) - and I'm having an issue. I upgraded the motherboard, video card, power supply, ram and (trying to) hard drive. I'm making the jump from PATA to SATA, and from AGP to PCI-E. Big day for me and my gaming habits.
I'm upgrading my OS hard drive from a WD 80GB PATA to a WD 640gig SATA - and I'm having issues. I've used Norton Ghost to clone the old hard drive (with my main utilities and Windows on it - I had the OS partition set to 15GB, so that is what I cloned over) to a new partition on the 640GB (80GB partition). So - 15GB OS partition to a new 80GB partition to run my OS. Problems are ensuing. After cloning and unplugging the old drive, the new one won't boot Windows - the BIOS won't recognize the new drive as master - only a slave, and it won't load.
I even used Partition magic to try to change my new partition to C...no avail, it still loaded from the G drive (which was my old hard drive - and the computer even changed the settings back after another reboot).
I've tried different scenarios:
1.) Unplugging both my PATA hard drives (I have another slave WD 320GB)- the bios does not recognize the new drive as being a master - it says its a slave, and won't load anything.
2.) Leaving my old C drive as master - and it loads from that, and changes my drive letter settings back after changing the drive letters through partition magic (old drive C, new OS partition G). If I don't do anything to the drive letters - it loads fine from the old Hard drive.
3.) Changing the jumper on my old drive to slave - but Windows loads to the screen where my login choices should be - and sits there with the Windows XP logo - not moving.

I'm beginning to think that I should just do a clean install of Windows XP on the new hard drive, save everything I need on my 320gig slave, and just take out the old OS hard drive completely. But when I do that, the computer reads my 320 gig slave as the C drive instead of the new 640 gig drive - it recognizes them both as slaves - and won't load anything.
I don't know if any of this makes sense, but if someone could help me out - I'm more than willing to give more information or clarify anything. Any advice?

-GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P Mobo
-AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
-G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
-XFX Radeon HD 4870 1GB
-WD Caviar Blue 640GB SATA(New hard drive that I want to use and partition - 80 GB or so for the OS and utilities, the rest for games and whatnot)
-WD Caviar 80GB PATA (Current master with my OS on it - 15GB is partitioned with OS, the rest is storage)
-Seagate Barracuda 320GB PATA (current slave that I would like to be able to have set up and eventually move to the larger partition of the new drive)

You will have to do a clean install no matter what. You changed the motherboard, and other hardware which leads to one thing, not the same drivers. If it was the same hardware then sure you would not have a problem cloning the HDD at all, but you changed way too many pieces of hardware in which this can lead to a BSOD, it will look for the old hardware from the C:\Windows\system32 file for drivers and not recognize them at all. And the reason it sits at the load screen its looking for the old hardware you had installed in the first place, which is no longer there. Its also looking for the old PATA drive that was installed as well where Windows was located at one point this also uses a driver, generic but none the less its still is looking for it.

So I am sure that the old board that you had and the one you have now is not using the same chipset, RAM, AGP Gart, ect....

This also will interfere with WPA as well

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php <-- read here.

I updated my hardware about a week before I got this new hard drive - and I've been using the old hard drive with this new hardware. I did have to "Repair" the Windows Installation after I installed all of the new hardware - at which point I had to activate my installation of Windows as well. I guess I will try to repair this installation too before I do a clean install.

I see that the WPA checks the hard drive device, so if that is different I guess that make sense.

WPA checks everything actually.

Tracer76:

WPA checks everything actually.

Yes, I was just noting that it had been okay with all the other hardware, and I changed the hard drive - and I noticed it checks that as well as everything else. Thanks for the advice.

Not a problem.

Just an update.

I left my new drive in the system, and unplugged my old master drive. I left the old slave plugged in as well. I booted with the Windows XP disc and did a repair. It reinstalled Windows on top of my old installation and kept all of my old programs. The only problem is that most of the programs in my computer looked for the C drive, and since I imaged to my new drive, it was on the G drive instead. I had to go into regedit.exe and change the drive letter to C and restart my computer.

Only problem was that the new Windows installation was on G. I had to repair my Windows installation AGAIN. That sucked. Then I moved everythin (games, pics, music) from my old D drive to the new partition (I: drive) - but everything on that drive says D. Regedit again...So after about two hours I have everything from my old drives installed on the new one, old drive letters assigned to my new hard drive and everything working exactly as it did before hand - games tested, ect - just on my faster hardware and bigger hard drive.

Thanks for the help.

That is a big pain to do sounds like it would have been faster for a reinstall.